


Sometimes

by Circadienne



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Circadienne/pseuds/Circadienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has to think about this for a minute.  600 words, basically happy, comes complete with climbing gym and things that go beep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

She rubs her nose and thinks for a minute. There was that guy at the gym last year. Mitch. He looked good from behind, hanging off the wall, and he had kind of a cute smile, so she took him home one night. The sex was all right, but he had those underpants with the happy face on them (disturbing), and then the next morning he ate an entire bowl of cereal with his mouth open. She could have overlooked the underpants, but not the cereal thing.

She didn't answer his phone calls. The next two times she went to climb, he wasn't there, but he showed up the third time and tried to corner her in the hallway by the dressing rooms and talk about their relationship. _We don't have a relationship, Mitch,_ she'd said, exasperated.

He didn't seem to get it, kept standing there with his hand braced on the wall beside her head, telling her about his feelings. Yeah. Finally Marcy the receptionist stuck her head around the corner to see what was going on, and Parker took advantage of the distraction to duck under his arm, give him a disgusted look, grab her bag, and leave.

She isn't sure if he figured out that she was responsible for that little belay device issue, but it's not like he could climb with a broken ankle. So — problem solved.

"Sometimes," she says, slowly. "I date sometimes." She realizes that her left hand's clenched around the steering wheel and relaxes her grip, sets both hands in her lap.

"You don't sound real positive, there." Hardison doesn't look up from his laptop.

"Nope."

His fingers rattle away on the keyboard and then he thumps the trackpad button emphatically with one thumb, sits back, cracks his neck. "There."

"There? There what?"

"Now we wait."

"For how long?"

"Until it's done." She frowns; he smiles back. "As long as it takes?"

She makes a moue.

"You want to get coffee or something?" He gestures toward the mini-mall across the street. "We'll be able to see Lisowski just as well from there as we can from here. If he ever leaves his hotel room, which I am starting to doubt."

"I could go see what he's —"

"No, no, you don't need to do the Spider-Man thing, thank you very much. You can wait. His room only has one door, and it has a card lock, and my phone's going to ring as soon as he opens it, and then we go do our thing. So sit down, have a cup of coffee, try to look like a normal person. Just for a little while. Mmkay?"

Parker shrugs. "All right. But you're buying."

He opens his car door. "I think my budget can take the hit."

She pulls her hat on and gets out, hits the remote to lock the car, then glances over at him, waiting on the sidewalk, laptop under one arm. He meets her eyes, and she's sure, for a second, that he's laughing at her. And then she's equally sure that he isn't. And then she remembers the social worker she had her last year in high school, who told her _when in doubt, it's better not to overthink this stuff._

"Yeah," she says, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, right next to the computer. "I date."

"Oh, you do?" He sounds amused, and a little surprised, and he smells good. Warm.

She's looking mostly at her sneakers now. They're about like usual. As is the sidewalk. "Sometimes," she offers.

"Well, all right, then."

He looks both ways before they cross the street. Very Boy Scouty, for a crook.

It's not like she can't drop him off something. If she has to.


End file.
